


Apparition & Nightmare Battle Unit

by water_bby



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Law Enforcement, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 18:13:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5466074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/water_bby/pseuds/water_bby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kakashi and Iruka are enjoying their vacation. Unfortunately, Gai's vacationing at a resort with a supernatural problem. So much for seven straight days off work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apparition & Nightmare Battle Unit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Berocca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berocca/gifts).



Kakashi glared at his phone. Everyone knew better than to bother him when he was on vacation. It might be just a marketing text from his service provider, but the sixth sense that made him one of ANBU’s best told him that he wasn’t so lucky

Sighing, he reached for his phone, wondering just how upset Iruka would be to have their week off interrupted.

_K. -- Need you and I. here. Something grabbing people. -- G._

Kakashi hung his head. Well, at least Iruka would be coming with him this time. And Gai’s vacation had also taken a back seat to work. He’d go tell Iruka, first, and then he’d get back to Gai.

* * *

Gai watched the sheriff move away from the main resort building toward her car. He headed after her, putting his cell phone back in his jacket pocket and hoping Kakashi didn’t call in the next few minutes

"Sheriff!"

"Yes?" Her reply held a tone that Gai recognized only too well, the one that told him that she really didn’t want to have yet another conversation about something that she couldn’t explain.

"May I have a word? In private?"

That clearly surprised her. "Over here." She led him to her car, which sat at the edge of the pool of light coming from the building. "How can I help you?"

"Actually, I was hoping I could help you."

“Sir, I started the day with six missing people, half of them under twelve. Now I have ten missing, including more kids. While I appreciate your help with the search parties today, I need to go figure out who’s taking these people.”

“What. Not who.” Gai sighed at her glare. There was a reason he tended to avoid dealing with local law enforcement when he could. Other members of the unit were better at it. “Sorry. It’s just that it’s not a person, or not just a person, taking these people. Frankly, it looks like a spell of some sort, and if I’m right, tomorrow you will have fifteen missing, and then twenty-one the day after.” He paused, watching her face. “If we’re lucky, we can get this stopped in the next day or two. It will stop on its own, but a total of seventy-eight people will have disappeared.”

“What if we keep everybody out of the forest?” He was mildly, and happily, surprised that she didn’t balk at the possibility of a supernatural root to her current problem.

“Either it switches hunting grounds, or it goes dormant and starts up again when people return. I’m sorry, Sheriff, but you have something in that forest that needs to be shut down.”

“So how can you help?” Now she sounded both annoyed and suspicious.

Gai’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out and opened the text message.

_on our way. call. k._

“Sheriff,” Gai said, “ANBU is coming.”

The suspicion became more marked. “You can call in the feds, just like that. Look, sir, I don’t have time…”

Gai flipped his phone around so she could see the ID in the case. “I promise, Sheriff, we’ll stop this.”

* * *

“What’s going on?” Kakashi barked when his phone rang. Iruka glared at him, but Kakashi ignored him. Gai would probably be more upset if Kakashi had answered with Iruka-level politeness. (In fact, the unit had once decided that Kakashi being polite when interrupted would signal they should check for a body snatcher. Or be a sign of the apocalypse. Iruka had laughed at all of them.)

A moment later, Kakashi jabbed the speaker button and put his phone down on the table while Iruka continued to stow their bags for takeoff. Being on a private plane made the job easier. “Go on, Gai. Iruka’s here.”

“I apologize, Iruka, for dragging you back out into the field,” Gai began, only to be interrupted by a groan from the other man.

“I have no problem being in the field! Really! I’m just better at being a trainer! So no apologies necessary. From either one of you. Just tell me what’s going on.”

Kakashi hid a grin behind his hands. The rest of the unit had been worried about Iruka’s move from active field duty to training, half-convinced that he’d finally seen too much but wasn’t willing to simply transfer out. Kakashi figured that the unit’s first look at Iruka’s trainees would put that worry to rest. Nobody who was afraid of field work would have developed Iruka’s lesson plans for the final six months of training. Kakashi was looking forward his role in the final exercise. Iruka wasn’t the unit prankster for nothing, after all.

“People are disappearing in the forest around the resort here. One on the first day, two on the second, three on the third, and four today. No, yesterday, now. I went out with the search parties today. It’s supernatural; I’m certain of it.”

And so were Kakashi and Iruka, because Gai was very good at telling the supernatural from the mundane.

“Counting curse,” Iruka mused. “From the timing, probably playing off the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas.’”

“That’s what I thought,” Gai replied. “I can’t tell if it’s a portal or actively hunting. And, so far, all the groups have been together, so I can’t tell if it can build a group or if it needs to find one of the right number.”

“Assume the former,” Kakashi ordered. “When search parties go back out in the morning, make sure they have at least six members, and tell them to stick together. We should be there by mid-morning. In the meantime, get a good night’s sleep. It’s likely to be a long day.”

“And the two of you, as well. See you in the morning.”

Kakashi disconnected the call and looked at Iruka, who was watching him closely.

“I think it’s a portal,“ Iruka said. “A practitioner good enough to place a counting curse that can actively hunt would have included a bigger hunting ground.”

Kakashi nodded. Iruka was the spellcaster in their group, after all. Kakashi trusted his intuition about their curse-caster. “Come on, Iruka. Let’s get that good night’s sleep. Or a few hours at least.”

Iruka laughed as he started adjusting the seats into a comfortable bed.

* * *

When the dark, sleek SUV pulled into the parking lot of the resort, Sheriff Lauren Smith barely noticed it. She was staring at the list of searchers from the night before, particularly the two names marked “called back, midnight” but not marked “checked in.” Between those two and the three boys who had, according to their sister, “gone into the woods on a dare before breakfast,” she already had five people missing today.

She did notice when her name was called. The man who had shown her his ANBU ID and then introduced himself as “just Gai” was bringing two men toward her. The taller of the newcomers looked half-asleep while the shorter was paying particular attention to the teenagers watching from the resort's main porch.

Their seeming inattention to her vanished the moment they came within six feet of where she stood. The half-asleep one raised his head just enough for her to see an eye patch under the brim of his hat, while the other smiled genially while his eyes flicked between her and the teenagers. Lauren had never met a magical specialist before, but she had heard the stories of the powerful practitioners who sacrificed part of themselves for even more power. She’d always thought it was a bad bargain. If she’d had even a bit of magic, she'd often thought, she would have preferred to be a generalist. Less power, more options, as her grandmother had said. But she'd take the help.

“Sheriff, let me introduce Kakashi,” a wave from the specialist, “and Iruka,” another smile from the second man.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” Iruka said. “If you could let us know if anything new has happened, we’ll get to work.”

Lauren sighed. “I’ve got five more missing. Two of my deputies never made it back in after we called the search off at midnight, and three more of the boys from the resort are gone. Shouldn’t whatever it is have gone after a larger group?”

The newcomers exchanged a look. “Can you get me an article of clothing from each of today’s missing people?” the taller asked.

Lauren blinked.

“I’ll come with you, Sheriff, and explain while these two get ready to go hunting,” Iruka said, half-bowing for her to lead the way.

By the time they’d reached the cluster of volunteers and their trucks, Iruka had explained that the way this day’s five had gone missing suggested both that the practitioner who had cast the spell was using a midnight-to-midnight day and that they were looking for a stationary portal rather than something that moved. “It makes it easier, in a way,” Iruka said. “We have nearly fourteen hours to find and stop this without worrying about being taken ourselves, and Kakashi’s pack will find it easy to track back to a portal. They’ll set out to track each of today’s five, and where they all end up will be where the portal is.”

“Easy,” Lauren repeated dryly. “Are you certain of that?”

Iruka laughed. “That’ll be the easiest part, at any rate.”

Before Lauren could reply, the shocked noises from around her made her look around and then back at Gai and Kakashi. The latter no longer looked half-asleep. In fact, he looked like a hound straining to be let off its leash, much like the eight dogs that were coalescing out of the ground around his feet. She'd heard stories about ANBU's tracking specialist, but none of them really prepared her for the reality.

“We’e better get those clothes, huh?” she said to Iruka, who was shaking his head and muttering about impatient show-offs.

* * *

Seven hours later, Iruka’s discussion with the various teens still at the resort was interrupted by the sound of nails clicking on the wood floors as a dog ran up to Iruka and dropped, panting, on his feet. Iruka smiled an apology at the teens and leaned down to pet the dog, asking, “Have they found it?” The dog nodded and pushed harder into the caressing hand. “Let me get my bag, and I will come with you.” As Iruka stood, he nodded at the teens. “We will bring your friends back.”

When Iruka had pulled his pack from the SUV and onto his back, the dog led him into the forest. Once out of sight of the resort, Iruka increased his pace, and the two of them ran, the dog always just a bit ahead. Unlike Kakashi, Iruka preferred not to show off his gifts. The reason he admitted to was not wanting to frighten non-practitioners, but he mostly preferred being the one underestimated in a magical fight. Today, though, it was indeed mostly about seeming as normal as possible. From what the teens had said, the young man who disappeared on the first day had a huge crush on one of the girls back home and had been talking about a book of spells for “showing love.” Iruka was nearly positive the young man was their practitioner, which meant that they had to break the portal themselves, rather than talking the caster into doing so, but also meant that it would be easier to break than if the caster were fully trained.

When Iruka arrived at the clearing in the forest where Kakashi, Gai, and rest of the pack waited, the others had already marked the portal, drawn a containment circle around it, and started working out options for rescuing the prisoners once Iruka broke it.

“Good news,” Iruka said. “I’m pretty sure victim one is our practitioner. Now go eat something and let me work.” Kakashi laughed at him, gave him a quick kiss, and then went to slouch down with his dogs. Gai nodded agreement and grabbed his own pack before joining Kakashi.

“Hey, Kakashi,” Gai whispered later as he watched Iruka draw ever more elaborate circles around the portal, “are you certain we can‘t get Iruka back in the field? He’s the best we have at this.”

“And he’ll be there when we need him. But he enjoys teaching, and if he’s teaching then the newbies will be field-ready when they come to us rather than three months or more in.”

Gai shot his friend a sharp look. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“Just wait. You’ll enjoy it more. Oh, look. I think we’re ready to break the portal.”

Iruka was waiting for them by a short flat rock, just big enough for one person to sit on, just to the side of the portal. “I think he cast here, so I’m using it as the focus. Kakashi, as soon as it opens, head in and start getting people out. Remember, we have fifteen to account for. Gai, pull them through if needed and let me know when I can drop the spell. Ready?”

* * *

Lauren Smith was once again in the resort’s parking lot when someone shouted, “Sheriff!” Turning toward the forest, she saw one of her missing deputies stumble out of the tree line, carrying one of the missing children and helping the child’s mother make her way toward the resort. Soon after, another small group emerged and those in the resort realized that the missing were coming back. Half an hour later, the only people not accounted for were the teenager who had gone missing on the first day and the men from ANBU. Lauren kept watch, and finally the last four figures appeared.

“Ah, Sheriff! We have dealt with your trouble! I fear that I may need to cut my vacation in your fair land short, but duty calls.”

Lauren’s lips twitched. “Not sure I’ve ever heard it called a ‘fair land’ before, but thank you. What happened?”

Iruka stopped beside her, one hand wrapped around the clearly chastened teen’s arm. “Stupid boys performing magic they don’t understand. We’re off to talk to his parents.” And then they were heading into the resort, followed by Gai.

“Don’t worry. Iruka’s good with kids who have more power than sense.”

Lauren hadn’t been alone with Kakashi until now. “Speaking from personal experience?” she probed.

“Maybe. They’re going to strongly suggest to his parents that the kid officially study magic rather than working it out on his own. If they agree, Gai will accompany him to a school. If not, you can always charge him.”

Lauren nodded. “We’ll see. Will you be staying the night?”

“No. Iruka and I were supposed to have seven full days free of annoying students, and I don’t want to give up more than I have to. Good night, Sheriff.”

She watched him walk back to the SUV, timing his arrival so it coincided with Iruka’s, and then she turned to walk into the resort.

* * *

On the afternoon of New Year's Eve, Kakashi let his phone's battery run down, set out the alcohol for their favorite holiday drink, and started the preparations for both dinner and midnight snack. While his hands were covered with food, Iruka carried two large bags into the kitchen, kissed him on the cheek, and thrust the bags into the refrigerator before starting to pull lots of the good dinner plates off the shelf. "Iruka? I thought we weren't having any one over."

"Nope. I thought the pack deserved a holiday treat, so I picked up some nice steaks while I was out. They had to work on vacation, too." Iruka was clearly trying not to laugh.

"Can I at least have you to myself until later?" Kakashi whined, eye dancing, while Iruka finally lost control and laughed.

"I was thinking you could call them near midnight." Iruka nodded at the food Kakashi was working on. "I'll set up the cheese plate. And make the first round of drinks."

Kakashi rolled his eye at his partner and went back to cooking. At least they wouldn't be bothered tonight. He hoped.


End file.
